Many of you are probably familiar with Social Media Revolution, a fantastic video created last year by Erik Qualman that examined the explosion of social media onto the modern scene. It did an excellent job of explaining the importance of the social Web and its impact on society. Erik is also the author of the fine book Socialnomics, which details how social media has forever changed the way we live and do business.

Since everything in the world of social media has been evolving so quickly, Erik has just updated that wonderful video to include many new statistics and graphics. If you loved the first one, you’ll enjoy version two just as much:

A new Edison Research report draws many interesting conclusions about U.S. Twitter users. The report summarizes the most recent data from a three-year tracking study conducted by Edison and Arbitron. The findings will help you better understand Twitter usage and assist in your social marketing efforts.

“Twitter Usage In America: 2010” pulled data from a national telephone survey of almost 2,000 Americans that was conducted in February. The data was laid over similar studies from 2008 and 2009, resulting in a comprehensive representation of Twitter-related use statistics. You can request a copy of the report from Edison at their Web site, or check out all the best charts below.

Takeaways:

While Facebook is the dominant social platform in terms of usage, Twitter is still growing rapidly and driving consumer awareness.

Twitter users are actively discussing products and services. It’s important to monitor conversations about your business and provide compelling content for users to discuss.

Despite the fact that Twitter is becoming popular, it’s still far behind Facebook — so an effective social media marketing strategy should include multiple platforms to maximize results.

Marketing on the social Web is becoming about multiple screens. Users are engaging on social networks on different types of devices including smart phones, laptops, and tablets. It’s important to make sure that your online presence is optimized to take advantage of different form factors.

As SMS use grows, marketers need to plan ways to leverage SMS as a valuable part of the marketing mix.

Among the findings:

Facebook has a commanding lead over Twitter in usage in the United States — but when it comes to social awareness, the two social platforms are roughly equal:

Edison determined that while 87% of Americans are aware of the microblogging site, only 7% actually use it. As a comparison, Facebook’s awareness rate is at 88%, with usage of 41%.

This dovetails with a recent Citibank report that determined the vast majority of small business owners don’t use social media at all:

Other interesting findings from the Edison report on Twitter

Users are actively discussing products and services:

They’re engaging on social networks from different locations an on different types of devices:

They love text messaging:

And they seem to be amenable to advertising:

In terms of ethnicity, 24% of users are African Americans:

You can download the report from the Edison Research Web site — it’s well worth it, since it contains many more useful social media data points for marketers. Here’s Tom Webster, Vice-President for Strategy and Marketing for Edison, unveiling the report in a webinar:

About 127 million Americans, or three-quarters of the population, use social media, according to Nielsen Online. In a survey of 1,700 Internet users, researchers found that 73% engage in social media at least once a week. Engagement was defined as reading a blog, visiting a social network, or reading/commenting on a message board.

The Nielsen study, commissioned by women-focused blog network BlogHer and NBCU’s iVillage, found that Facebook is becoming a major attraction for a majority of the population, rivaling the reach of traditional media channels. Of the online population, 47% visit Facebook daily, according to Nielsen, nearly rivaling the 55% that watch TV. Facebook daily use easily beats out other traditional media like radio (37%) and newspapers (22%).

Social gaming is a daily habit for a huge number of people. According to Nielsen’s survey, 32.7 million people play social games daily. That’s equivalent to newspaper readership and more than double the readership of magazines in the sample. Social games are polarizing, however, as over 50% said they never play them.

For all its buzz, the study found Twitter is still a niche activity for all but a small segment of the online population. Twitter boasts 105 million registered users — but according to Nielsen, just 11.4 million (6%) use it daily.

BlogHer and iVillage commissioned the research to determine the role of social media in the lives of women versus the general population. It found little differences between the sexes when it comes to social media adoption, with women slightly more likely to tweet and blog while men watch more videos.

Blog reading remains a niche activity for online users, with just 11% saying they read them daily — it trailed message board readers (17%). BlogHer’s audience, of course, is more inclined to visiting blogs as a habit, with 77% reading them daily and 96% weekly. The BlogHer audience sample also identified blogs as trailing only search among ad-supported media in purchasing decisions.

BlogHer COO Elisa Camahort said the popularity of social networking is not stealing time and attention from blogs. “It’s like any media progress we’ve had,” she said. “Nothing is killing the other media source. Blogs are still where substantive conversations are happening. It’s not on Facebook.”

As new ways to engage consumers and market products on the social Web keep multiplying, it’s important to stay abreast of best practices for brands. Research firm Psychster partnered with Allrecipes.com to find out which types of advertising yield the best results.

The study tested 7 different types of ads on two different publisher Web sites, Facebook and Allrecipes:

Banner ads

Newsletter subscription ads

Corporate profiles with fans and logos

Corporate profiles without fans and logos

Get widgets

Give widgets

Sponsored content

Participants were shown a video of an ad type and an interaction and were asked to rate how likely they were to interact with the ad as the video did. They were also asked what their opinion was of the brand sponsoring the ads (either a car brand or a soup brand).

Results:

Banner ads and newsletter links were the most successful at encouraging purchase.

Sponsored content produced the highest interaction ratings, but the lowest purchase intent and viral recommendations of the 7 ad types. So this type of ad may be a good marketing strategy for raising brand awareness and generating positive associations/brand engagement, but isn’t the best choice for increasing sales.

Corporate profiles caused higher purchase intent only when people could become a fan and put a logo on their own profile.

Give and get widgets were more engaging than banners and newsletters, but they didn’t increase purchase intent or the likelihood of recommending a product to a friend. Since widgets are pricey, tweets and links may be a better choice.

The success of an ad was increased by matching the brand with the Web site (e.g. a soup ad on a recipe site).

Takeaways:

If your goals are brand awareness and positive associations, sponsored content may be your best bet.

If you’re trying to increase purchasing and loyalty, go with profiles that allow people to become fans and add logos to their own profiles.

If you’re targeting purchasing and the best ROI, good old banners and newsletters rule.

Infographics are always great for conveying and interpreting data. Here’s a fantastic Facebook fact sheet from SiteImpulse’s Website Monitoring Blog. It traces the social network’s history and milestones and includes user activity and engagement statistics along with other facts and figures from the company. It incorporates a list the top 10 Facebook countries based on the number of users (the United States is tops with over 111 million, followed by the United Kingdom with 23.5 million), and the top 10 Facebook pages (Texas Hold’Em Poker, anyone?).

You can track referrals from Facebook or Twitter in Google Analytics, but what if you want to track specific links within your social media profiles to measure their effectiveness? For example, what if I want to see how many people visit pamorama.net by clicking on my Twitter profile link? This tutorial will teach you the simple steps you need to take — and this method can be used in conjunction with any of your social profiles: Facebook, LinkedIn, or the legion of others.

1: Create a trackable link

Head over to Google’s URL Builder to create a URL that can be tracked separately in Google Analytics. Fill in the spaces as indicated in this screenshot with information about your social media profile:

2: Shorten your trackable link

Google’s URL Builder will create a very long URL, so it’s a good idea to shorten it with one of the many available online shorteners. For the example below, I used bit.ly, but any of them will do the trick:

3: Add your shortened trackable link to your social media profile

You’ve created a trackable link and shortened it — now you need to add it to the the social media profiles you want to track.

4: Track your URL in Google Analytics beginning the next day

Since you used Google’s URL Builder, the link will be tracked automatically in Google Analytics each time someone clicks on on it. You’ll be able to see your referrals by going to Google Analytics -> Traffic Sources -> Campaigns. Google Analytics takes about a day to begin reporting the referrals.

Have you used Google Analytics this way? What did you learn from the data?

If you had any doubt about the extent to which Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms have taken over people’s lives, stats like these should help put them to rest.

A recent study by Retrevo surveyed just over 1000 Americans and asked questions such as when, where, and how much time they spend on sites and services like Facebook and Twitter. It turns out that many of us are obsessed, checking in with our social circles at all times of the day and night.

We check social media sites all night long…

Not only do we check Facebook and Twitter throughout the day, almost half of the respondents said they check in on the social media scene in bed, during the night, or as soon as they wake up in the morning. And no big surprise here: users under the age of 25 tweet more at night than older users.

… and first thing in the morning (especially iPhone users)

Half of social media users are so involved with Facebook and Twitter that they check the sites first thing in the morning — 16% say this is how they get their morning “news”.

iPhone owners use Facebook and Twitter more often and in more places: 28% of iPhone owners visit Twitter or Facebook before getting out of bed in the morning, compared with just 18% of all social media consumers under age 25 and 8% of those age 25+. Similarly, 26% of iPhone owners check in with Twitter or Facebook before turning on the TV, compared with 17% each of all social media consumers.

Over half of us check Facebook at least once a day

More evidence that social media can be habit-forming: 56% of social media users say they need to check Facebook at least once a day, and 12% check in every couple of hours just to see what’s happening.

And many of us don’t mind being interrupted by text messages

Consumers were also asked how they felt about being interrupted at various times by electronic (including text) messages: 40% said they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message, 32% said interruption during a meal was fine, and 7% said they would even check out a message during an intimate moment.

Do you check in with your social circle at all hours? Do you find yourself depending more on social networks as trusted news sources?